Exponential
technology and information are
poised to transform the world, but can the human species muster the
social will to let that happen?
To date we’ve created amazingly fuel-efficient cars, robust water
purifiers, revolutionary stem cell -based therapies, and
better, cheaper light bulbs, all of which have met with great
social and political resistance, greatly slowing the pace of their
spread. This has caused many to scratch their heads in confusion,
others to curse up at the sky, and some to chuckle at the naivete
of their fellow meme-monkeys.
Take for example Dean Kamen, the
Edison of our time who invented compact kidney dialysis, the
Segway human
transporter and most recently a water purifier that could save
upwards of 5 million lives in under-developed nations if widely
deployed. Kamen’s innovations have repeatedly encountered social
barriers, causing him to proclaim that creating new technology is
the easy part.
“I’m disappointed with every project I ever do. Because you work
on something for years that you think should take hours. You
finally get it done and you think, ‘Now the world’s going to be a
better place,’ expressed Kamen in a recent Newsweek article,
“Then you find out that as fast as technology moves, people move at
the same slow, cautious pace they always did. If anything, people
have gotten more cautious, more afraid of change, more skeptical,
more cynical.”
Sloth-like technology diffusion is nothing new. The late great
Everett Rogers
taught us that all technologies except for Interactive
Communication Technologies (ICTs) spread at an amazingly slow rate
due to cultural barriers. Seasoned futurists all point out a
consistent bias in favor of overly ambitious predictions and
sternly warn their fellow prognosticators to avoid similar
mistakes. And now Kamen has joined the ranks of those with enough
experience to back up the notion. (cont.)
Cascio talks about the interlinked nature of issues stemming
from global warming, global poverty and nanotechnology and points
out that the solutions to potential problems are, fortunately, also
interlinked.
Jamais Cascio at Open the Future is on to
something big with a new concept he calls the
Participatory Decepticon, the yang to the yin that is the
Participatory
Panopticon. The general idea is that we’re beginning to see
instances of modified/corrupted video content that can greatly
benefit the deceiver via a spike of monetizable attention.
“Such a deception wouldn’t stand for very long, but would almost
certainly last long enough set off a wave of furious blog posts and
mainstream media attention,” argues Cascio, citing political videos
as an example.
Having been burned by fake news like the
iphone face-to-face talk photos and having seen many a critical
thinker hoodwinked by
April Fool’s blog posts I certainly agree that this Decepticon
is in its nascency. The corruption, camoflaging, variation seems to
indicate a new type of evolutionary internet-based
memetic/temetic/content mechanism at work. The fact that deliberate
content “mutation” has economic upside, as seen in the increase of
April Fool’s spoofs, indicates that more brains will take advantage
of the opportunity, especially as the value of human attention
continues to rise. Thus, certain deceptive content packets will
replicate and proliferate much more quickly thanks to the fluid
content economy enable by the internet .
If we view memes and temes as more or less alive, as
Susan Blackmore (one of the most important minds in information
theory right now) argues and I tend to concur, then what’s
happening is these little virtual organisms (in concert with
humans, for now) are developing new survival and reproduction
strategies.
At the same time, humans are benefiting from the increasingly
rapid release of content variations. – Yes, there is a silver
lining. (cont.)
When seriously exploring the futures ahead of us it’s impossible not to encounter discussion of the “Singularity”. A concept with multiple profound meanings, the Singularity meme is an important tool for framing our understanding of how tomorrow will unfold.
As Tyler points out, the Singularity has been picking up great traction in both scientific media and leading intellectual circles. Case in point is the involvement of forward-thinking juggernauts like Peter Thiel, Vernor Vinge, Peter Diamandis, Esther Dyson, Marvin Minsky, Justin Rattner and the infamous Ray Kurzweil, all of whom will be presenting at the Summit this October – an event that will be thoroughly covered by MemeBox and Future Blogger (proud media sponsors of the event).
As an add-on to the summit, attendees will also have the option to attend an Emerging Tech Workshop (Oct 24th) organized by SciVestor, featuring panels on Robotics, the Semantic Web and Natotechnology, plus a closing keynote by seasoned foresight pro and Future Blogger favorite Jamais Cascio.
I will be there with my FlipCam reporting on the event for Future Blogger and hope to see you there as well. I promise you, the memetic rush will be akin to drinking water from a fire hose. It’s a great way to get a valuable crash course in accelerating change, artificial intelligence and a variety of disruptive forces poised to transform the world around us.
Disclaimer: MemeBox is a proud media sponsor of the Singularity Summit 2008. That being said, you really should attend.
